A journey from scattered logs to a single source of truth.
Let’s paint a common industrial site scenario – A supervisor in a mining facility is flipping through pages of handwritten safety observations while juggling incoming radio alerts from various departments. An Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) officer in a construction zone relies on grainy CCTV footage to investigate a delayed incident report. Across the factory floor, maintenance teams use outdated spreadsheets to track safety permits and equipment status. This fragmented approach to managing safety data isn’t just inefficient—it’s risky. Delayed responses, unreported hazards, and manual oversight often create gaps too wide to ignore. In 2025, AI-driven Safety Command Centres (SCCs) step in, offering a consolidated, intelligent dashboard that turns real-time site activity into actionable insight.
Seeing risk before it becomes an incident
One of the most transformational aspects of an AI Safety Command Centre is its capacity to observe what human eyes might miss. Traditional surveillance systems such as CCTVs are passive; they record events but rarely inform them. However, when the same number of CCTVs and IP cameras on site are integrated with AI-enhanced video analytics, the dynamic Safety Command Centre takes over. It tracks, identifies and responds to unsafe acts—such as a worker entering a hazardous area without PPE, vehicles idling too close to fuel tanks, near-misses caused by workers distracted by mobile phones or two pieces of heavy equipment converging in a blind spot. In a copper mine in Zambia, AI cameras detected a haul truck repeatedly straying close to the pedestrian walkway. Over two weeks, the smart command centre flagged five such occurrences that previously went unnoticed. As a result, the site was able to redesign transit routes, resulting in a 60% drop in near-miss events. A Safety Command Centre is more than just a control room—it’s the central nervous system of industrial safety.
With the power of video analytics, it doesn’t just monitor—it understands worker behaviour, predicts risk, and ensures the site responds before danger makes the first move.
Speed is the new standard
Manual safety workflows often come with delays—incident reports filed hours later, approvals stuck in inboxes, or inspections repeated due to lost records. In high-risk industrial settings, those minutes can mean the difference between a near-miss and a fatality. With an intelligent command centre at work, safety teams are equipped with real-time alerts, voice-based incident reporting, and automated escalation paths. At an oil terminal in Saudi Arabia, workers using mobile-linked alert systems reported a gas leak via voice command. The alert was triaged by the command centre and relayed to emergency responders within 3 minutes, cutting typical response time by over 80%. What’s more is the safety command centre’s equipment with smart scheduling and permit validation tools which help enforce workflows. For example, one facility in Hong Kong refused to issue a hot work permit until atmospheric readings met safety thresholds—an automated decision that averted a possible ignition event.
Turning data into actionable intelligence
The shift from lagging to leading indicators is redefining safety leadership. It’s no longer enough to track the frequency of the accidents or tally audit completions. AI command centres compile behavioural patterns, worker movement data, equipment anomalies, and even biometric cues to create dynamic safety dashboards. At a multi-site manufacturing group headquartered in Europe, predictive analytics tools identified elevated fatigue levels in night-shift forklift operators, detected through subtle deviations in movement and reaction speed. Adjustments in scheduling and shift rotation followed, leading to a 40% reduction in minor collisions within two months. Safety heatmaps created by these safety centres go a step further, offering visual hotspots of recurring incidents, equipment misuse, or near misses—helping teams pinpoint not just what went wrong, but where and why. There are site-wise scorecards generated, which enable EHS leaders to compare performance across multiple operations, track recurring patterns, and prioritise interventions with data-backed clarity. In fact, in a multi-site construction operation in South Africa, heatmap-based analysis led to a targeted shift rescheduling initiative in high-risk areas, reducing incident rates by 31% in just one quarter. This kind of data-driven insight changes the safety conversation, from compliance enforcement to strategic foresight. What we need today is not just a record of what went wrong, but a view into what might go wrong next. That’s where data becomes our strongest safety asset.
The power of centralisation
Industrial safety teams often deal with the challenge of scale, having to monitor large zones with various tasks operating simultaneously, multiple sites across the globe, or remote installations from a central office. Without real-time access, even the best-trained teams are left making decisions in the dark. AI Safety Command Centres bring all such distributed safety operations under one roof. From an urban high-rise development to a deep surface mine or offshore rig, activities can be visualised in real time, complete with detection overlays, worker ID logs, and equipment status. In a recent implementation across four regional logistics depots in Malaysia, command centre integration enabled the EHS leader to view simultaneous feeds, cross-compare safety metrics such as Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs), Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), and initiate standardised responses for recurring violations. The result: improved coordination, faster compliance closures, and a 33% reduction in duplicated effort across teams. The Head of the EHS Team of the Malaysian Enterprise stated: “Before the command centre, we were firefighting site by site. Now, with real-time insights and unified dashboards, we act faster, align better, and solve issues before they multiply. What used to take hours of cross-checking spreadsheets now happens in minutes, with confidence and clarity.”
Designing a future-ready safety culture
What’s emerging through the evolution of workplace safety with smart command centres is more than a new control room; it’s a new mindset – an AI-driven safety mindset! AI-powered command centres promote a culture where safety is no longer confined to inspections or post-incident reviews. It becomes embedded in every movement of the workers, every decision by the supervisors, and every second of safe operations on site. As industries across the globe, continue scaling their operations, this centralised approach offers not just efficiency but resilience. In an era of mega projects and sustainability mandates, real-time safety oversight is a necessity. By consolidating critical safety data, automating incident detection, and standardising emergency responses across complex worksites, these command centres transform safety from a fragmented checklist into a unified strategy.
This opinion piece is authored by Gary Ng, CEO of viAct.
